Nimrod inquiry opens again for new evidence

The board of inquiry into the explosion that killed 14 crew of an RAF Nimrod has been reconvened, families of the dead servicemen were told last week.

The decision comes after a series of documents were passed to The Sunday Times describing how hundreds of gallons of fuel leaked from the aircraft during mid-air refuelling on a number of occasions.

The board of inquiry is believed to have blamed leaking fuel for the explosion over Afghanistan in September last year but was unable to specify the likely cause of ignition.

One of the documents, the report of an internal inquiry, warned that the aircraft were so old that they would suffer more"unexpected failures". It described how a cooling duct in the bomb bay of another aircraft ruptured in November 2004.